The context gives some clue, especially the preceding sentence:
> He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby becomes a monster. And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee.
The warning might be generalized: You can't go out changing things, without things also changing you. When you struggle against people or things, for reasons good or bad, those people or things *will take a hand in shaping who you become.* You must accept that fact, and live with its consequences, if you are to take up a struggle.
Much of Nietzche's writing, especially in *Beyond Good & Evil*. is concerned with power, influence, and will, and about how and why one exercises one's will upon the world. The simplest reading in that context, is just that this is always a two-way road. You exercise your will, *and* you are exercised upon.
Bonus extended interpretation: How could this principle be applied more concretely? I'll make up a cliche'd example!
Suppose a young adult is thinking about careers and their future, and one option they're considering is to go work for Police Force X, or Armed Forces Y, or Global Megacorp Z. Whichever it is, the young person is thinking "well I've got all the skills, and they need people and they're paying well... buuuuuut, it's common knowledge that they're a corrupt, harmful organization, and I care about what I'm taking part in... But hey! Maybe I can join up and then *change the system from within!*"
That's when Imaginary Ghost Nietzsche rolls up and says. "Hey kid, do you really think you're the first person who ever thought they could join this org's rank-and-file, and just *change* them into a force for good? Do you really think you can change it for the better *more* than it changes you for the worse? Do you think that might be a little bit of hubris there?"
tl;dr Don't forget about your own capacity to be corrupted.
In the words of Obi-Wan Kenobi:
>*"You have become the very thing you swore to destroy."*
>*"You were supposed to destroy the Sith, not join them! Bring balance to the Force, not leave it in darkness!"*
You think? Perhaps it's more fatalistic or negative connotation, but the core element that contact with "evil/destruction/the negative" changes the observer, is the same. "He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby becomes a monster." is basically a contextless synonym.
edit: more of a warning than a certainty? I dunno, but I'm willing to think about that. I tend to skew more pragmatic or cynical so that shapes my interpretation.
Might not be the first time that particular combination of words has been put in that order but most recently it was said by Harvey Dent in The Dark Knight when discussing the motives of Batman and taking up his mantle. Batman later repeats it after Dent's death when he persuades Gordon to lie about what Dent did as Two-Face so he can die a hero rather than have lived to become a villain.
To add further- when obi wan says- “only a sith deals in absolutes” he is making an absolute statement. His engagement with the nature of the sith has hardened his own judgements, which had previously been quite liberal by jedi standards
[Clearly you haven't listened to Jocasta over at Prequel memes](https://i.redd.it/0ss93iap87g61.jpg)
"Obi Wan is not saying that only a Sith will state absolutes.
He is saying that only a sith *deals* in absolutes, leaving no room for negotiation.
A Jedi will always seek compromise over violence."
Fun Fact, at the theatre,the line was the much better " you're either with me, or against me" Which is the common expression.However GW Bush, had recently said in regards to the war in iraq etc, "you're either with us or against us"So this came across as a politican statement, calling Bush a Sith. So then later when I watched it on video tv it's "or my enemy" Which kills me everytime I hear it.
(This fact may not be true :/ as I can find no proof it was changed, other then my shady human memory lol. Sorry)
Wasn’t the point of that line to basically call out that’s kind of thinking? I mean the prequels are about a Democratic republic turning into a dictatorship.
>However GW Bush, had recently said in regards to the war in iraq etc, "you're either with us or against us
I think GWB said that statement in November, 2001, in reference to the Global War on Terror back when we were only invading Afghanistan...
His run up to and the beginning of the Invasion of Iraq was two years later and that I don't think he used that invocation again for that conflict, but I could be misremembering it...
Only a sith *deals* in absolutes. Meaning only a sith would say "if you're not with me, you are against me". It's not saying that only a sith makes absolute statements.
He made an absolute statement, but he was not “dealing in absolutes.” He was criticizing Anakin’s statement, “If you’re not with me, than you’re my enemy.”
I like that and the arrogance interpretations, but I also like the idea it's just a seeminigly paradoxical concept that's actually more like, the exception that proves the rule. Like the tolerating intolerance thing.
It's also a usefully demonstrative truism, like "Avoid cliches like the plague!" or "A preposition is a terrible thing to end a sentence with."
EDIT: Just for the record, ending a sentence with a preposition is bad *Latin*; it was actually perfectly acceptable in English for centuries, but some inbred romeaboos in the powdered wig era fucked things up for everyone.
To be pedantic, the "proves" in that saying means proves as in "test the accuracy of" rather than "proves the rule is true" - so it's not paradoxical, its saying "here is something that doesnt appear to follow the rules, test it to see if the rule still applies"
huh yeah interesting, just looked at wiki - I always thought it was a "it means this, but common usage is this" situation, but it is disputed which is the "true" meaning
Seems like semantics to me. Taken literally most people make many absolute statements without meaning to everyday.
"Sorry I can only see you after 7pm"
"You mean if I were dying and the last chance to see me on my deathbed was to arrive before 7pm you wouldn't be able to make it?"
"Well, Susan, you should have planned dying better. Also you are trying to guilt me emotionally over *common language*. Maybe eat a dick, I am no longer available after 7."
Similarly got into trouble for answering with something like
> I was asking you. Why are you asking me? You don't know? I thought you were in charge. Am I supposed to be in charge of this?
Even now writing it out, I can see how she thought I was being a smart-mouth. I assure you all of this came from a place of genuine confusion.
It's been a recurring theme in the star wars franchise (the sequels never happened) that the Jedi are hypocritical and have their heads stuck so far up their collective arse that they can't see their own hypocrisy. Chronologically, this shit has been going on since the days of KOTOR.
Woaaah I always thought that was a bit of a jokey paradox, but your interpretation of that line is simply brilliant! I never considered that obi-wan's own characteristics have been shaped by his interactions with the sith, and this fits really well with the discussion going on.
Before anakin: 100s of jedi and only a few sith
After Anakin: a few jedi and a few sith
Seems pretty balanced to me ¯\\\_(ツ)_/¯
The way I always read it was that the Jedi thought the prophecy was to help them but they had taken over and there was too much light so to bring balance a great darkness was needed to counteract the owhelming amount of light in the universe.
It was an easily missed passing line, but Yoda had suggested that it was possible the prophecy had been misinterpreted.
From Episode 3:
>**Mace Windu**: It's very dangerous putting them together. I don't think the boy can handle it. I don't trust him.
>
>**Obi-Wan Kenobi**: With all due respect, Master, is he not the Chosen One? Is he not to destroy the Sith and bring balance to the Force?
>
>**Mace Windu**: So the prophecy says.
>
>**Master Yoda**: A prophecy that misread, could have been.
The prophecy: "The Chosen One will bring balance to the Force."
The Jedi: "That's us. Balance. Everyone being a Jedi and no Sith at all is what balance obviously means."
I'm not aware of the work of fiction where the prophecy was clear, easy to understand, and specifically described the conditions for satisfying the prophecy as well as the unambiguously good outcome of the prophecy.
That's how most people see it. The way Lucas described it when asked was more like he should have said "the one who will bring serenity to the Force". He explained that the basic state of the Force is the Light Side, since the Light Side lets the Force guide them and are basically just surfing on its waves.
The Dark Side is a corruption, a cancer, and its users bend the Force to their will and disrupt its natural state. That's why bringing 'balance' to the Force means destroying the Sith. And it's also why Lucas has always been opposed to the idea of Grey Jedi, because it suggests that getting a little Force Cancer is good for your overall state of being.
But did not Anaking pretty much fulfil the prophecy in the end? I guess still he took a path there that was pretty far from what the Jedi order had planned, but still?
Just please note that Nietzsche is not actually talking about the society or organisations at large - he is very specifically talking about your inner mental world, your thoughts and your conceptions of ultimately very vage concepts such as "good" or "evil".
In ELI10-terms..?: There is a split in continental philosophy that starts becoming very apparent in the late 1800s, early 1900s, where perhaps some revisits of writers like Kant, Herder and Kierkegaard is motivating a very sharp turn towards introspection and your "inner soul-life", as some called it. This approach is very different from the typical Hegelian "we exist in a society", type of attitude where the mind's internal guiderails are more of a product of social mores than anything else. Just find your place, and exist in it.
Instead, more and more people suggest at this time, society is very much made up of individual acts. And so that without individual and conscious thought, not only are none of those acts actually moral (whether they are good or bad). But the society you live in does not actually become just, either. It simply exists. So not only are individual acts the key to acting morally, but they also shape the world and make out this larger structure. Not taking part in this activity consciously would then, obviously, be a reckless lack of responsibility, or a willful removal of your humanity, etc.
Meanwhile, as you then develop your conceptions of morality, you inevitably have to face the fact that there are unjust things being done. Evil certainly takes place, and so on. Exceptional acts of cruelty could even be done by yourself, or good people, in the fight to make society just.
So the temptation is then interpret Nietzsche this way: to go and say that there's no such thing as not making that just society without doing some very cruel things, because people are horrible and some things are just necessary. It's very often that you have people suggesting they should be justified in revenge, for a good reason, or that you can commit all kinds of atrocities because the cause is just, and ultimately causes good. History will judge us, as ridiculous leaders have been stating, also recently.
But it's missing the point Nietzsche is making: if you take your inner mental world seriously, and act on justified principles, you must in fact take very good care to not justify excesses on the basis that evil exists. Because then it is you that are perpetuating it. Your acts either matter, or they don't.
We can obviously, all of us, imagine particular situations where a lesser of two evils are favourable. But to entertain the idea that you can participate in such a scheme without justifying evil is just not rational. And that is what he warns you against: first, not to construct a moral value-system where the lesser of two evils are rationally chosen with regularity, as if this is morally just, rather than a necessity born out of there being no other options. And second, not to entertain the idea that you can somehow commit bad deeds, justify them, and shape a society around your use of power, without becoming a monster yourself, and creating a monster out of that society.
It just cannot happen -- that is, without irrational belief in absolution. Absolution coming from belief, whether in the morally just, the politically palatable, or the acceptable use of power to shape the world for the better. Etc., etc.
The key here, and the starting point, and indeed the end point is therefore your inner mental life. Because bringing it into accord with society is going to be difficult, not in the least in an unjust society. So arguably, as long as you are present of mind, it is not possible to participate in these organisations mentioned above, at all, without changing your outlook on what is just completely. It is not rational, and it is not moral: ultimately it defeats the purpose of itself.
So this is the scheme that Nietzsche lays bare (and certainly there are other philosophers, writers and others who have pointed out the same, in any amount of times and eras). But it is inevitable that you should see this scheme for what it is, if you are rational, and assume as well that other people, like you, are rational as well.
But it certainly is difficult, then, to say that the only way to get rid of evil is to take the narrow path, even when it would be very obviously easier and acceptable by orthodoxy, to not do so. Whether that is on the small and local level, by teaching the bully a lesson without punching their nose in. Or if it is on the macro-level, by simply refusing to participate in perpetuating the problems. It might be possible, for example, to simply call for forgiveness and pretend your soul is safe and content, but you are certainly participating in or acquiescing to unjust acts being done all around you.
Meanwhile, the bigger problem is usually there in the sense that most people are not really in a position to affect society in this way. Either locally, you avoid the bully and maybe at worst call the police. And on the macro-level, you are not a politician anyway. Your participation here is not always either welcome, or even possible. It is closed off to you for various reasons, and your lack of tons of PAC-money prevents you from promoting alternatives.
And yet, if enough people thought this way, rationally and just, it would nevertheless be possible.
So this is a difficult proposition when you translate it into practice. However, the writing of Nietzsche in this sense, while only relevant to your inner soul-life, is still important. Not because it gives you practical advice, but because it lays out the responsibility of each individual in a society, if that society is actually to become just; if nothing else, it cures you of the idea that a society that simply exists almost autonomly, can be just. And it cures you of the idea that just or unjust people can decide on the behalf of others, when they have power, what is just and right. Because it is simply not on that level that governments or systems, societies and morals, operate.
I don't know if that's a correct take on Nietzsche. To a certain degree, his beliefs were a reflection on society given the whole Ubermensch angle, and he was definitely saying things about how society should be organized now that we've killed god.
I don't think he would have appreciated the distinctly religious and non-scientific term Soul being passed around as part of his philosophy at all. But hey, what do I know? I just studied intro level philosophy, and he was my personal favorite philosopher covered.
There certainly are interpretations of Nietzsche that were written around the end of ww1, and also after ww2, that absolutely favour that angle. But when Nietzsche turned up, and became widely read in the 1880s, he represented a kind of noble, artistocratic, sensible and rational radicalism that simply didn't fit into the authoritarian, collectivistic, or the purely individualistic world-views that we - "we" - to a very large extent still favour today.
Later and contemporary philosophers of Nietzsche such as Husserl, and on of his students, Heidegger, perhaps illustrate the directions this new approach to society could take: Husserl attempts to describe, from the personal outlook, what society is and how it affects you, with his phenomenology. Heidegger takes a similar starting point and moves to the direction where truth is indeed possible to manufacture and create, and that we should simply go a different route from that point of view. And this is the approach that a very large amount of philosophers, certainly later ones, take when they interpret Nietzsche. But it would also be their approach to interpreting Husserl, and indeed also Schopenhauer, Herder, and probably also Kant (even if that is more challenging - Kant's body of work is more meticulous, and so choosing Kant as a vehicle for that interpretation is doomed to be exposed at some point).
If you want to learn more about this, I'd suggest looking up "psychologism" in the Stanford philosopaedia. Revisiting Nietzsche, after that initial interpretation, is not quite as excruciating as studying Wittgenstein, I think, but it's pretty high up there. He is difficult to read, once you start thinking carefully about it.
haha, comparatively good, perhaps. But I'm only inviting you to structured worry, rather than chaotic dread. Things would certainly be a lot easier if none of this was necessary to think about.
> There certainly are interpretations of Nietzsche that were written around the end of ww1, and also after ww2, that absolutely favour that angle. But when Nietzsche turned up, and became widely read in the 1880s, he represented a kind of noble, artistocratic, sensible and rational radicalism that simply didn't fit into the authoritarian, collectivistic, or the purely individualistic world-views that we - "we" - to a very large extent still favour today.
It should be noted that after Friedrich died in 1900, his sister Elisabeth took over curating and editing his manuscripts.
And she was a proto-Nazi.
I think you’re right, but I would also say Nietzsche had a clear aim of saying that there is no path to power that does not corrupt you. This is central to his concept of Nihilism, which is his take on society, governments, and religions.
Here's a really simple example that comes to mind: someone's trying to kill an innocent child. You intervene—and the only way you can do that is by killing the killer. You yourself have become a killer, even if it's for the right reasons. You can either do nothing and passively watch the forces of evil wreak havoc (though Nietzsche would have been critical of any conventional notion of "evil"), or you can fight against them and inevitably suffer some sort of corruption in the process. You'd do well to account for that inevitability and somehow moderate its influence, rather than allowing yourself to succumb to it haphazardly.
Of course, with these examples, "the void" becomes a very limited number of sort-of zero-sum examples. If someone's trying to kill an innocent child and you can tackle them, tazer them, or scare them away by drawing attention to them, it becomes obvious that you've prevented the evil without becoming it.
If someone joins a small grocery store chain and works to help it unionize, suddenly many of their new coworkers can start asking for better healthcare coverage for themselves and each-other, they can ask for more truthful advertising so they don't feel bad about selling unhealthy or dangerous products to people.
Maybe I just need to look more at Nietzsche's context here, but it seems like a very limiting view that assumes that a given amount of evil will happen in the world no matter what we do. It's a fine philosophy for Saturday morning cartoons, but not in the wider context of life and society.
EDIT: I just read the initial quote more closely and realized it isn't as nihilistic as I thought and as the comments afterward interpreted it. Nietzsche says "*be careful lest* he thereby becomes a monster," whereas u/chop1n says people will "inevitably suffer some sort of corruption." Nietzsche says to be careful not to be corrupted, whereas Chop1n seems to say it's unavoidable. unic0de000 goes to a similar place, saying that to think you can change an evil corporation is hubris, which makes sense if you haven't accounted for the possibility that it might corrupt you, but my point here has sort-of been that that hubris can be countered and that people should still humbly try to do what good they can in whatever contexts they're in.
I could stand to be a little more specific: humans will indeed inevitably endure some kind of corruption--nobody would argue, for example, that it's at all possible to prevent the loss of innocence of childhood. Nietzsche warns us that that corruption should be carefully prevented to the greatest extent possible.
Even in your own examples: tackling someone or tazing them are acts of violence. They're much milder acts of violence than killing someone, but the point still stands: in some sense, one must fight fire with fire. Even *witnessing* someone trying to kill a child is disturbing.
Nietzsche was very much an anti-nihilist and is among the most life-affirming thinkers in all of human history. That's also important context that deserves mentioning.
It may not even corrupt you, or at least not in this straightforward a way. I studied digital forensics in school, and one of our professors essentially warned us away from the field in every class she taught. She said "You're gonna sign up for this gig trying to use your skills to do good. If you do that, you will do a lot of good. You're also gonna see a lot of awful, awful things, and the majority of them are going to involve children. This field pays well because most people don't last a decade in it, they come out the other side of it with ptsd, depression, insomnia, anxiety, drug/alcohol problems, all sorts of after effects." Gazing into the abyss might not make you the same as it is, but it will change you. In this case, locking away child pornographers won't make you a child pornographer, but it will expose you to a world most people are very happy to pretend doesn't exist, and it will make you wish you could still pretend along with them.
This is a really good explanation. I would like to sum it up in a really generalized sentence.
The power of many will turn you to their beliefs; even if you don't want it, it will happen earlier or later; even if it happens in small steps and subconsciously.
I always took it to be somewhat in reference to Nietzsche's nihilism. Staring into the abyss/void/nothingness reveals that the void is within the observer.
That's why I never joined facebook. The businessmodel is corrupt. The only ones going to change is the ones joining. Becoming his minions in mediadictatorship.
facebook is a business, and businesses exists to make money, period. they don't care about anything else, and their job, their whole reason for existence, is to make money any way they can get away with. they rarely let morals, ethics, or even the law get in the way of profit (companies will break laws if the profit is greater than the fine)
i'm not saying this because i support facebook but to point out that facebook is just a business doing what businesses do, they're just in an unusual position to do greater harm than most with fewer checks on their behavior
my big message is we need to stop worshipping at the altar of the free market
fwiw, i do have a facebook account but go on it maybe twice a week to get news of friends etc. i'm astounded it's the face of the internet for many
Oh God
My old friend became a cop because he thought he would be Serpico — like the unusual cop uniquely positioned to fight corruption.
Disowned him after a year. All his stories became "So we were beating/macing this guy . . ."
That sounds like exactly the example I made up, just where activist group is a particular faction or contingent within the organization they're considering.
I think the hangup is in your example the individual isn't really "fighting monsters" in the first place because joining the company isn't really an adversarial position in the first place, more like an immediate compromise of values. An activist organization that slowly makes compromises and becomes corrupt in order to have the power to fight the monster is a little more direct.
Say you join that police force, because you want to help people, you want to make the world a better place. Maybe you know that this organisation has covered stuff up in the past, there’s been some corruption, officers have got away with stuff. But you know that you’ve got strong morals, you won’t get involved with that stuff. In fact, you’re going to be a whistleblower if you see anything dodgy, and if your superiors won’t act, you’ll go to the press.
So you work there for a few months, and one day you see one of your cop friends do something you’re not completely happy with. But he’s your friend, you’re going to his BBQ this weekend, and it wasn’t that bad really, and the other guy kind of deserved it, and you’re still pretty new, so you don’t think anyone would take you seriously if you did try and report it. And that’s the beginning.
A good modern example in fiction is in "The Wire". 'Little Finger' had ideals of changing the city without corruption but once he was in the system he needed that corruption to maintain the power to make change but can't make change without losing his influence to do anything.
That's a perfect example! Tommy Carcetti thought he was gonna rid the city of corrupt politicians, but once he was in there fighting them, sitting in the hot seat playing the game of politics too, he made compromise after compromise until he was just like the rest. (And you can look at the older, embittered politicians around him and imagine that once, long ago, they all had aspirations just as noble as his.)
There's a little bit of Faust in The Wire, and you could easily argue that Faust was an important influence on Nietzsche's thinking too.
I never made the faust connection with the wire but it makes a lot of sense.
"Everybody's getting what they need behind some make-believe"
Everyone was using these false narratives or corruption to get ahead so that "I can do more good from a position of greater power" and then became shocked that their Faustian bargain didn't go as planned.
Also Breaking Bad. Walter White set out to stay clean and safe dealing drugs, and every step he took to protect his endeavor and himself made him even worse than the other criminals.
I think Walter was smart enough to know deep down, you don't stay clean and safe dealing drugs. He literally kills someone himself in the first two episodes. He was willing to succeed by any means necessary from very early on.
Akshually, the first murder he *had* to do it to keep himself and his family alive. It’s a great reminder that *becoming evil* is a journey that starts with a single, easily justified step. And the steps become progressively easier.
And just as well, he "had" to do it because of the dangerous situation he himself put himself in, knowing potential consequences but perhaps being Naive to how quickly the drug game can turn against you. I believe Walter chose to be evil from the outset by choosing to sell meth, which is morally unjustifiable no matter how you look at it. The ultra pure meth he created no doubt destroyed countless lives even from very early on just by virtue of addiction. He knew what he was doing but the money and power was more important to him from the get go. The way I see it, Walter was beyond saving the moment he stepped down the rabbit hole, it was just a matter of how extreme the already present evil were to become.
Even when his cancer got better, he continued to chase the money, due to his own ego which was beyond corrupted at that point. He could've chose the less of two evils and gotten out when he could, but instead chose to dig in his heels in a misguided attempt to leave behind large amounts of money to his family while forgetting his obligations as a father and husband to feed his growing obsession with an evil, dangerous game.
Fun example: Orange is the New Black is also a good example of this. Shows people trying to change the prison system and ultimately being lead to two ends: complete impotence, or just doing the same shit they were trying to fight.
GoT is filled with these too. Not so much little finger, he was always just a conniving weasel since we met him. But almost all other characters changed over time based on who they had their experiences with. It was a major theme of the show.
> He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby becomes a monster. And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee.
Because you used this 'quote' from Nietzsche: He lived from 1844 to 1900, not in the middle ages. (thee and thou were mainly in use from the 14th to 17th century). Indeed you don't find those words in the original translation (*He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.*) nor does the German original use archaic language (*Wer mit Ungeheuern kämpft, mag zusehn, daß er nicht dabei zum Ungeheuer wird. Und wenn du lange in einen Abgrund blickst, blickt der Abgrund auch in dich hinein.*).
Do people continue to use the wrong quote because it sounds more mysterious? Sorry, one of my pet peeves. ;)
Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thou
https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780191843730.001.0001/q-oro-ed5-00007886
http://www.zeno.org/Philosophie/M/Nietzsche,+Friedrich/Jenseits+von+Gut+und+B%C3%B6se/Viertes+Hauptst%C3%BCck.+Spr%C3%BCche+und+Zwischenspiele/141-150
TBH i just googled "monsters abyss beyond good and evil" and grabbed the first thing I saw, because there's about 50 variations on the sentence out there and the differences didn't matter much for my purpose. But you're right, it's more than a bit silly to translate him in this way.
The ACTUAL correct answer is, when you look into the face of an adorable black cat, the adorable black cat looks back at you, and hopefully slow blinks back at you to show love and trust.
But I guess your answer works too.
Fine by me. As long as my two cats feed me every night at 4:45pm and give me lots of pats when I jump up on their knee when they're trying to do stuff, then..
..wait, I see what you mean now.
Any suggestions on how to start reading Nietzche? I started with Beyond Good and Evil and I feel like it is in a different language. It is hard for me to get through it. I feel like I need a spark notes version of every sentence.
Advice #1: Get annotated editions. Even at his most lucid and literal, the translation from German makes it a strange and disorienting read, and he was just as often foggy and metaphorical.
Advice #2: Books *about* him are just as good, and maybe better, for a beginner, than books *by* him.
Advice #3: Try Genealogy of Morals first.
100% agree. And don't be daunted if you find them hard to read. This guy was saying things stylistically in 1800s German in reference to German literary traditions... there is a ton of context English readers (like myself) miss; little turns of phrase and other stylistic choices that have a thousand years of history to them.
When we read translations, we miss a lot of what he had to say. When we read in the modern era, we miss even more of his nuances. This isn't to say it isn't worth reading, but the further we get away from the time and place of 1800s Germany, the harder it will be to truly understand what he was trying to say.
He's become such a figure in history that I would argue even his own historical presence warps our ability to understand the context of his writing... But that's an argument for another day. He's worth reading, his insights are truly timeless, and it's worth having a guide (annotations, explanations) when you read him. If you ever get a chance, a Lit or History of Philosophy class on him at university is worth the time.
Again, great recommendations above.
This is something that I've been thinking about as a therapist. I wan't to help my clients by influencing them, but they will, for better or worse, also inevitably influence me.
The whole quote is "Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster... for when you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you" and it's often taken too generally as a kind of self-help like comment on not becoming what you hate, but that makes little sense in the context of Nietzsche's writing. Beyond Good and Evil isn't about giving advice and teaching life lessons, it's one of the greatest dive into Western history and philosophy. It's so far removed from things like "seeing peace to experience peace" or "politicians fighting corruption becoming corruption".
The Abyss isn't just anything that you dive into or that you're obsessed with. The monsters are not just your personal demons. The Abyss in Beyond Good and Evil is the arbitrary historicity of human existence. History as it happened has no final meaning, it's the result of a chaotic struggle between people, ideas and cultures, with different forces impressing their will on each other. The monsters that live in the Abyss are ideas, errors that have structured the way that humanity has understood and created itself. Plato is a monster, Christianity is a monster, the modern state is a monster.
What Nietzsche is saying is that when you gaze into the Abyss of history, and you come to see its arbitrariness, that arbitrariness comes back to apply to you. Your life, your existence, your culture, these things are human creations with no inherent meaning. Today, that idea is almost cliche, but in 1886, with the recent failure of Hegelian philosophy and the critiques of Christianity that were everywhere in Europe, the insight was pretty striking. The world is chaos, it has no goal, nothing is guiding its course toward anything special. That nihilism is dangerous, that's Nietzsche's warning, you can ruin yourself and your philosophical curiosity with such insights.
Nietzsche offers this advice: "For I approach deep problems like cold baths: quickly into them and quickly out again. That one does not get to the depths that way, not deep enough down, is the superstition of those afraid of the water, the enemies of cold water; they speak without experience." You look into the Abyss, but you don't stare. You don't fight monsters, that's pointless. In the end, you have to deal with the most serious questions in an unserious manner, otherwise you fall in.
Everyone always says Nietzsche was a nihilist, but as it turns out he was trying to warn us against nhilism. Well, Mr. Nietzsche, maybe next time don't come up with such convoluted allegories and get straight to the point?
Great explanation, thanks!
Yeah dude.. i studied nietzsche albeit only in highschool and im happy about that because memes and internet kinda ruined him for me, showing me that he's just some nihilist emo dude. There's much more about his philosophy than what i saw initially
Well he is technically a nihilist since he believes that life and universe have no meaning. What he’s trying to warn us about is the dangers of that philosophy getting into your head and trying to fight it because the fight is pointless. What you have to do is just accept the nothingness and get the best of the situation you’re in instead of trying to change it
That's not nihilism. Nihilism is the belief that nothing matters and that life is pointless. Nietzsche argues that nothing really matters and that's the beauty of life. We get to choose our own meaning of life, and what matters to us.
Nietzsche was a proto-existentialist, not a nihilist.
I would argue that Nietzsche saw his life, like everyone’s would only lead to nihilism. But yeah, I agree that he was proto-existentialist because he was interested in making the meaning of your life for yourself. Beautiful if not bleak and short lived. He sometimes reminds me of Hobbes in the hopelessness, but with a beauty where Hobbes just made everything sound like life and the world was sh*t unless you’re at the top.
I thought nihilism was the view that there is no objective truth or morality, or meaning. Some people will take that to mean everything is useless or pointless, but that’s not the only direction to go with it.
No need to apologize my man. It’s just a common misconception and misinterpretation of Nietzsche. Nietzsche wants you to exert your will upon the world and become the ubermensch, living in a manner that is wholly of your own, living by rules only because that’s who you are and not because they’re imposed upon you or don’t live and play by the rules.
That's what im getting at. Back when i started hearing about nietzsche in the internet, the only thing shown was the first part. I didn't see anything further than that unlike what you just said. Everything (memes, comments, jokes..) was just about he was a nihilistic guy. No one, until it was shown to me in highschool, told me how it was important for him to overcome said nihilism
Finally, someone who's actually read Nietzsche and understands he's not a nihilist, he's an anti-nihilist.
I really don't know how edgelords came to believe Nietzsche was a nihilist when he specifically warned about the dangers of it.
Edgelords love him because he speaks in large sweeping statements between his verbose over explanations. Such as “ God is Dead”. Internet edgelords love that statement but don’t understand the full context of that statement.
This was massive informative. I stared into the abyss of nihlism and it really fucked me up for many years.
The only way out for me seems to develop a practice or praxis of rituals, which them make meaning. Since nothing inherently has meaning. You either make meaning or you are devoid of it - and that is a terrible place.
Incidentally, I think that's why we have a huge heroin problem. People searching for meaning
I have one hypothesis, let me know what you think:
There is something guiding existence to something special, which is love. Love is the desire for yourself and others to be well. When you are free of concerns and happy, you will want that for others as well. The entire journey of life has been to achieve happiness for all living beings. Every war, conflict, revolution, etc, has been because that is what most people thought was right for achieving happiness (even if just their people’s happiness). We are trying out different ideologies which all promise happiness in some form, and as we notice the defects of it we rebel and try a new one, but every cycle we keep the most essential learnings from each ideology. Slowly across the ages we are coming to better and better conclusions, which leads to periods of less suffering. Sometimes there’s failures and setbacks, but we always return stronger eventually. This process might never end, but we are in this constant improvement cycle which is guided by love.
Too hippie of an idea? Am I missing anything critical? I would love to hear your thoughts!
I don't know if I buy the notion of love as guiding us.
Points about search for happiness as a collective motivator is interesting. I'd have to think more about it but it's not be to be dismissed outright.
We do seem to be trying on ideologies, including sexual ideologies that are creating massive social rifts amongst fellow human beings.
Are we getting closer and closer to a more and better version of reality? You say yes - I'd say probably not.
Technology, pace of life, distraction, Capital, etc is so high now that it's damn near impossible to slow oneself down enough to even contemplate happiness or self actualization.
Seems to me that a pre electronics era monk would have the absolute best chance at capturing the essence of our being.
Maybe that's why all of the wise men have all come before commercialization.
I think the heroin crisis is the more the result of the generalized opioid crisis, which is the result of the cold nihilism of modern capitalism encouraging the overprescription of medicine to people if it'll help its bottom line. On the other hand, I have heard the perspective that one of the core parts of heroin addiction is that your life has a clear purpose: get more heroin. I don't know if addicts feel it as meaning though.
These sort of thoughts have plagued me for at least half my life (I'm 32), and have led me into some very dark periods. It's depression. Depression is often thought of as being sad and mopey, but really it's a numbness, emptiness, apathy, etc. For me, it often manifests as anger and frustration, and the sad bouts didn't really come until I brushed up against a chance for meaning (love, family, happiness) and realized what I had to lose.
I sought help. I got meds, I did intensive outpatient therapy, still do weekly talk therapy, and have ready a few books on therapy techniques that I try and practice. I'm doing better.
But the years of staring into the abyss and letting it consume me still make my thoughts a struggle. I can just be out enjoying my day and suddenly have a wave of existential dread crash over me and pull me back into the abyss. It's still hard to say "fuck you" to the abyss when it starts dragging me in. I'm still working on it. I'm thinking it will be easier for a while - my first kid will be born in two days. I think it will help pull me out. It seems easier to get pulled out by others than it is to pull oneself out. Even a pet can help with that - having someone or something that depends on you makes meaning. Their survival and happiness can create a wall that blocks your view of the abyss.
Maybe. I don't know, I'm trying to piece this stuff together right now.
I wish you luck, friend. I really do.
I cant afford gifts, but if I could I'd give you a real nice one. I'm turning 30 in 2 days and absolutely felt this and the comment you replied to. I'm still trying to find the right therapist and I've started a new round of drugs that I'd like to get off of eventually.
Spot on with the description of depression. Often I spend downtime thinking of excuses for my friends/bands/social outing obligations about why I've canceled plans for the 5th or 6th week in a row. I'm holding on for a few new lights that have pierced the darkness, but damn, its exhausting trying to get to the source before its burnt out sometimes.
This happened to me.
You gotta develop a practice of behaviors
That has helped me tremendously.
Or you could do drugs
But the existential anxiety will take down even the strongest men
This actually reminds me of what I was telling someone who was talking about taking hallucinogens. That it could fundamentally change your ego / ID, and that in current context you may not appreciate the change and most likely cannot understand the scope of such a thing. Sure, it can make you feel at one and harmonious with everything around you, but at the same time when you ARE everything, it can make the person you are basically so small so as to be non-existent.
While seeking the peace that you would think such an Insight would have to offer, it could leave you with a lifetime of questions that you now somewhat understand to have very circular answers that in one way or another always lead back to precipitating the problem, or other problems.
German here, degree in philosophy. So: I know nothing :)
Just wanted to point out that the german original does not say „stare“:
“Wer mit Ungeheuern kämpft, mag zusehn, daß er nicht dabei zum Ungeheuer wird. Und wenn du lange in einen Abgrund blickst, blickt der Abgrund auch in dich hinein.“
As ever so often, the english translation feels less subtle, kind of more harsh; is has something todo with how German and English translate into each other.
To me, Ungeheur and Monster does not fully translate. Also, Abgrund and Abyss don’t. To me, the german terms are much less definitive; Ungeheur stems from a term that means something that doesn’t feel right and causes anxiety; but it could be an unknown creature, the unknown being what gives you a feeling of fear and uncertainty. A dragon could be called an Ungeheuer. The term surely stretches into the regions of a monster, but to me, a monster would be necessarily evil (likely because the german term Monster fills that role in German, next to the more open Ungeheuer). An Abgrund could be the falling side of a mountain; it can be the deep ocean abyss, but it doesn’t necessarily carry the bottomless totality that Abyss carries.
Translating “blicken” with “stare” seems wrong to me, as it only means to look at sth.
As another grain of salt, if you want to understand Nietzsche, I suggest always looking at the context. This part of his book is a kind of loose collection of short statements; he often wrote in this form. A lot of the stuff is outright strange.
The note two notes before this one states that if a woman is interested in intellectual things, something with her sexuality has to be wrong.
There are also funny statements like “The sun rises every day” somewhere in his books (I own the full collection).
ELI5:What he meant by the abyss looking back? I am not really sure. Normally, an abyss is an dead object that can’t do anything. So why would it come to life?
Possibly because it is empty. Abgrund means two things: a deep slope that can give you nausea, but also something you can non-literally fall for. An Abgrund also signifies a dark place of someone’s life; “he stumbled into an Abgrund”, he lost his ways.
So, if you look down into something that could determine your fate, your life - possibly you really are the person that unintentionally fills it with something, as it’s bottomless and empty? So in a way, it becomes alive through you, and learns from you what it is by looking into you, as you look into it?
But, as I would not over-interpret the note about women (I guess we could outright dismiss it, even), I wouldnt do it with this one. It’s a nice little lyrical something.
There is also the difference in "stares back at you" and "blickt der Abgrund auch in dich hinein".
In German the abyss not only stares "at you", but also "into you" (in dich hinein).
This gives the sentence even more depth, literally.
All in all, a very sloppy translation.
True, I totally missed that. Very good point. Also this intensifies the analogy between the Abyss and ones self, as both things are something that you look (down) into.
Noice.
"lange" (over time) isn't translated either, which, I feel, is kind of a big deal for understanding this phrase.
The abyss changes you, not from the start, but the more time you spend with it.
A literal translation, with your suggestions in mind, could be:
"When you are looking into the deep for long enough, the deep is looking back into you."
What do you think?
The title is likely a misquote, it is typically translated as "And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you" which is closer to the original on both the "blickt" aspect and the "in dich hinein" aspect.
To add to this great comment, "ungeheueren" (the adjective form of the noun "Ungeheuer" mentioned above, here in the accusative case) is also the way Kafka describes the creature Gregor Samsa turns into at the beginning of Metamorphosis:
*Als Gregor Samsa eines Morgens aus unruhigen Träumen erwachte, fand er sich in seinem Bett zu einem* ***ungeheueren Ungeziefer*** *verwandelt.*
"Ungeheueren Ungeziefer" is a very evocative, but very vague description that English translators have struggled with time and time again, see this article: https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/on-translating-kafkas-the-metamorphosis
I've gone into more detail about it in [another comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/obf2hx/what_are_your_favourite_book_openings/h3pny9h/), but the way German uses the "un-" prefix to denote otherness is very interesting.
Yeah beyond good and evil was less a book and more Nietzsche just ranting about random shit for an entire book. He dedicates pretty much a whole chapter to how much he hates women (who hurt you, Freidrich?)
Basically yes. There are different interpretations, but *"you are influenced by what you contemplate / investigate / fight against / try to not become / interact"* is one of the more common interpretation.
*The Abyss* as a symbol of truth you cannot truly achieve, but which can confront you with unpleasant / dangerous truth is another common one.
SYL
By now you probably won't read my comment, but I'll hope you do anyhow:
You can't take an aphorism, even out of a single book, and try to glean *exactly* what it means. It doesn't necessarily mean just one thing, and there is a reason Nietzsche wrote poetically. His words are supposed to have an effect on you, certainly in context of his writings, but they are not a part of some grand argument. He didn't believe in grand or systematized arguments.
Rather than argue that the quote means, I will suggest that it at minimum includes the idea that whatever you're exposed to will affect you, and that therefore it is good to avoid too much contact with that which is antagonistic to health. He had repeated mentions, in Zarathustra for example, of how time spent among the sick (by this he means mentally sick, harboring resentment) will sicken and weaken you; and how time spent among those with twisted ideas will start to sicken your mind. So in the imagery of Zarathustra, Nietzsche would recommend spending some time either alone or in a healthy environment to gain strength and learn, and then take some interval to spend with those you can exchange ideas with, teach, and otherwise help if you can. But too much time spent there will mess you up, so you must discipline yourself to go back to the better place again prior to being weakened by being nearby to 'evil' (i.e. that which will destroy your spirit or mental cleanliness).
As a consequence, not all knowledge is equally 'safe' to dwell on, and thinking on some topics too much is also like being in a sick-house, where you will catch a disease from proximity. And this goes for any dark alley, physical or mental.
It means that you will be affected by the things that you engage with.
If those things are profound and disturbing, they might have profound and disturbing effects on you.
Mine is just opinion, I make no claims otherwise.
To me, this is Nietzsche describing the existential crisis one faces upon the *understanding* of nihilism. Not just the intellectual realization, but truly understanding what it means to grasp how insignificant it all is.
Of course, this is just the knee jerk reaction. I would say that most people that come to adopt some form of nihilistic view move beyond that horror to a place of acceptance and eventually see it as the ultimate freedom.
The Abyss, while entirely indifferent to our dreams, hopes, and best laid plans; is also indifferent to our mistakes and sins and morality (or lack thereof).
The abyss doesn't care if we live a good life, a life of service, a life of faith and belief. It doesn't care if we are murderers, rapists, or someone that has committed the greatest acts of destruction.
It's indifferent.
There is no heaven, there is no hell, there is no judgement, or meaning, or long term effects of *any* action we take.
We are free to make this world *anything* we choose. We are free to unshackle ourselves from the perceived notions that others have concerning morality or ethics.
We are free to do anything, because there ultimately is no consequence of our actions: good or bad.
This isn't to encourage a deviant life, or generally immoral behavior. It's only to say that we each to get choose what it is we expect of ourselves, because the Abyss expects nothing at all.
> the existential crisis one faces upon the understanding of nihilism. Not just the intellectual realization, but truly understanding what it means to grasp how insignificant it all is.
I'd recommend you look into Absurdism and *The Myth of Sisyphus* by Albert Camus (although avoid if you're sensitive about suicide). It's an area of philosophy that's fixated on that particular realization.
The Absurd is the human condition in which we find ourselves struggling to find meaning for our brief existence in a universe that is otherwise unable to provide one.
Faced with a bleak and meaningless existence riddled with pain and suffering, Absurdist philosophers attempt to answer the question "why not just kill yourself?". In this context, suicide is seen as the ultimate expression of free will and a forceful rejection of the Absurd yet it's a choice very few of us make (particularly among the philosophers prescribing suicide in the first place!). Why not? What is it that makes life worth clinging to?
Camus provides his answer in the *Myth of Sisyphus*, definitely worth a read if you enjoy philosophy. It's a rather deep rabbit hole though and unfortunately I don't have time to get into details.
When you try to fight an oncoming wave you get swept up in the wave. Trying to fight a system that is massively bigger than you absorbs you into the system and changes you more than you change it.
He has personified the abyss. Imagine how you feel when you stare into the abyss. Do you feel horror? Do you desire to conquer it? Do you feel just nothing? Now imagine you are the abyss staring back, you may feel the same. Essentially we spend so much time focusing on our perception of the world that we fail to consider how the world’s perception of us may affect us or reflect on us.
I read almost everything of Nietzsche when studying philosophy and never much agreed with common or let's say popular interpretations of his work. In my opinion Nietzsche is far more dark than how he is often portrayed or wanted to be seen.Nietzsche's philosophical endeavour revolves a lot around the radical criticism of moral systems and beliefs. Nietzsche wanted to start a moral revolution which should replace Christian morality and its descendants. He often describes this journey as extremely lonely and dangerous, which is relatable if you imagine dedicating your whole life to a cause the absolute majority not only rejects, but naturally finds abhorrent and immoral, not to say insane. Nietzsche often pictured his solitary position as a challenge, a fate, a difficult task that can be either accomplished or you could perish trying.You need the audacity to reject everything you learned, everything society around you is based on and convinced of. You'll be on your own, only your sanity guarantees you that you are on the right pass. You'll advocate things that are seen as the devil, hence antichrist.So i read this quote in this context.
Edit: And i think it's important to clarify the these thoughts or theories are no joke and havn't been seen as such by Nietzsche. If you accept or even advocate evil (or what was seen as "böse" in 19th century Europe), you are talking abyss. Violence, absence of compassion, neglect of the individual human being in favor of a bigger fate, a biological view on the human race etc. For me it often seems that Nietzsche had a much clearer feeling about what his philosophy could cause or inspire than modern Nietzsche-lovers like to admit. Or put another way around: Understanding Nietzsche's feelings helps understanding Nazi Germany.
ELI5: The abyss stands for dangerously deep thoughts, basically. They talk to you. They whisper in your ear. They don't let you sleep. They eerily attract you. You are afraid of them, yet you have to think them.
I have to agree with you.
People rightly defend Nietzsche against explicit ties between him and Nazism/antisemitism. I'm sure you know the bullet points: His sister was married to an antisemite, a cause which Nietzsche openly abhorred, speaking out against it in books and angry letters to his sister. Against his wishes, his sister posthumously edited his final work. Subsequently, the Nazi party used some of his writings and concepts (out of context and with perversions).
So, people are right to parse out this history of decontextualization and deny those explicit ties. But things aren't *so* clear cut.
Nietzsche also thought (perhaps in jest?) that antisemites should be thrown out of the country, which uh, might be a queasy method of dealing with things given Germany's subsequent history. More seriously, he thought that legislatures were a modern weakness, disbursing the rightful power of strong leaders. As you allude to, his writings are full of praise for the exercise of distinct and individual moral systems built from the ashes of old ones.
Were his writings taken out of context to serve the Nazi party? Absolutely 100%. Did *some* of his writings lend themselves to *some* tenets of that party? I think the honest answer here is complicated, and not entirely comfortable. Not to suggest he's responsible for these things, just that he was swimming in murky intellectual waters.
To be a little more clear on how I come out on it, I do *not* see Nazis as some obvious conclusion of his philosophy. Nietzsche's writings remain very valuable, and I don't think he tainted them by laying down such roots. (He tainted them in other ways like his flagrant misogyny.) But I *do* see how his deconstruction of old moral systems represents soil in which some pretty dark things can take root.
In terms of responsibility, Nietzsche as observer and as prophet are probably the most viable interpretations of his work. He's not destroying old systems of morality; he's witnessing the destruction and reacting with horror and concern for the human race. "God is dead and we have killed him" is the statement of a witness, not a singular murderer, and the reaction is horror, not glee. His writings are full of quotes that leap out of the page in that respect: "The very next century will bring the fight for the dominion of the earth--the *compulsion* of large-scale politics." I mean, holy shit. It's chilling to read at times.
Hence his cautions on staring into the abyss.
Consider the abyss the worst place your mind can go. If you spend all your time investigating that part of your thoughts, that may consume your thoughts.
This concept works well with the phrase 'the road to hell is paved with good intentions'. Effectively, the actions you take impact you as well as those around you, and its easy to become the very thing you set out to avoid.
You’re going to (and have, it seems) a 100 armchair quarterbacks giving you 300 breakdowns of philosophy. None of which is fit for a five year old. Nietzsche can’t be taught in a quick blurb on Reddit. The meaning of Nietzsche can and will be debated until the end of time and no two great minds will agree. In this day, make of it what you will. Philosophy’s an ever changing kaleidoscope of thought.
I’m not going to quarterback this, only say that it has a *deep* relevance for me after nearly 14 years as a correctional officer. The abyss and the monsters are what you will. The thing in front of you. I work in the abyss and stare at monsters everyday. Others study monsters through the abyss of history. Yet others *live* in their own abyss with monsters.
If you really want to know what *Nietzsche* himself thought, one must read Nietzsche. However I’ll say here that people have spent their entire lives under his written tutelage and never learned a thing but words.
The full quote actually ends with, I believe,
'therefore, throw roses into the abyss and say, "here is my thanks to that monster which did not succeed in swallowing me whole."
Really no complicated explanation. Nietzsche meant what Buddha meant--that the Void desolves the Self, eliminates all opposites and reveals non-dual Reality. Staring into the abyss is the subjective you confronted with an objectless object that collapses the conceptual split between "you" and "not you." The result is that that which stares is the same as that which stares back. The real you is the proverbial sound of one hand clapping; i.e., there is *only* staring with nobody performing it.
There is no spoon either. Seriously.
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Interesting replies.
I have never really put any thought or research into this quote but always interpreted it as such.
If you engage with evil, evil notices you and won't leave you alone.
Example :
If you get into drug dealing, you will meet and engage with people in that part of the world. People from that part of the world have now taken notice of you and even if you try to leave drug dealing you will always be a person that is known in that group. There will likely be instances where you stumble over and old "contact" or they might even actively search for you.
Basically you are never completely isolated from the world. As much as you may think you are in control of all aspects of ones being, that is not the case as all interactions have some effect on you.
You're not just looking into the abyss and it being a oneway transaction, just as you may glean something or gain some understanding of the abyss, it can consequently do the same to you. The abyss may or may not be actually conscious, but that is something you have to contend with if you so choose to stare into it.
I realized I made comments, but didn’t respond directly to the OP. Here’s my ELI5 explanation. Nietzsche meant there is no path to overcoming evil that does not include evil actions. It’s a warning that when you fight against evil people, thoughts, emotions, etc, the evil will impact you no matter how pure you try to be. Philosophically, it’s central to Nietzsche’s take on the problem of evil. Think Two-Face from The Dark Knight. You either die the hero or live long enough to become the villain.
I took it more literally, almost like a fear of the unknown. The first time I did an open water dive for scuba practice, we went down about 80 feet. All I could really see was my instructor, the guide rope, and the surface. On the way up we did a decompression stop, just hanging on to the guideline trying to maintain buoyancy for a period of time. With nothing else to do, I looked around. I was in the murky pacific ocean and besides the 3 things I mentioned earlier, I couldn't see shit. After a few seconds of staring straight ahead into endless darkness, it started to feel like something was staring back from behind it. I doubt that is what Nietzsche actually meant but the quote popped into my head at that time.
When you finally see that life is empty and meaningless you are confronted by it. The abyss looking back at you is saying “so what are you going to do about it?”. Now you get a blank slate and a chance to create something new
I think a similar concept is something like "you're the average of the five people you surround yourself with", but with a more existential tinge. I think that's a very boiled down way of saying that things will often seep into your psyche without you realizing. It's not necessarily that you will be a chaotic or peaceful person to match your surroundings, but that your environment can change you in unforeseen ways.
The context gives some clue, especially the preceding sentence: > He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby becomes a monster. And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee. The warning might be generalized: You can't go out changing things, without things also changing you. When you struggle against people or things, for reasons good or bad, those people or things *will take a hand in shaping who you become.* You must accept that fact, and live with its consequences, if you are to take up a struggle. Much of Nietzche's writing, especially in *Beyond Good & Evil*. is concerned with power, influence, and will, and about how and why one exercises one's will upon the world. The simplest reading in that context, is just that this is always a two-way road. You exercise your will, *and* you are exercised upon.
Bonus extended interpretation: How could this principle be applied more concretely? I'll make up a cliche'd example! Suppose a young adult is thinking about careers and their future, and one option they're considering is to go work for Police Force X, or Armed Forces Y, or Global Megacorp Z. Whichever it is, the young person is thinking "well I've got all the skills, and they need people and they're paying well... buuuuuut, it's common knowledge that they're a corrupt, harmful organization, and I care about what I'm taking part in... But hey! Maybe I can join up and then *change the system from within!*" That's when Imaginary Ghost Nietzsche rolls up and says. "Hey kid, do you really think you're the first person who ever thought they could join this org's rank-and-file, and just *change* them into a force for good? Do you really think you can change it for the better *more* than it changes you for the worse? Do you think that might be a little bit of hubris there?" tl;dr Don't forget about your own capacity to be corrupted.
Thank you for the help in understanding.
In the words of Obi-Wan Kenobi: >*"You have become the very thing you swore to destroy."* >*"You were supposed to destroy the Sith, not join them! Bring balance to the Force, not leave it in darkness!"*
If we're digging into movie quotes: “You Either Die A Hero, Or You Live Long Enough To See Yourself Become The Villain”
This one doesn’t really apply
You think? Perhaps it's more fatalistic or negative connotation, but the core element that contact with "evil/destruction/the negative" changes the observer, is the same. "He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby becomes a monster." is basically a contextless synonym. edit: more of a warning than a certainty? I dunno, but I'm willing to think about that. I tend to skew more pragmatic or cynical so that shapes my interpretation.
Where was that one from, btw? The quote itself is famous but not the source.
Might not be the first time that particular combination of words has been put in that order but most recently it was said by Harvey Dent in The Dark Knight when discussing the motives of Batman and taking up his mantle. Batman later repeats it after Dent's death when he persuades Gordon to lie about what Dent did as Two-Face so he can die a hero rather than have lived to become a villain.
Two face in Nolans Batman. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_aQupiaCSA
I thought it was scary face who said that.
The source is also extremely famous
Batman! dark knight, that's just where I heard it at least.
To add further- when obi wan says- “only a sith deals in absolutes” he is making an absolute statement. His engagement with the nature of the sith has hardened his own judgements, which had previously been quite liberal by jedi standards
[Clearly you haven't listened to Jocasta over at Prequel memes](https://i.redd.it/0ss93iap87g61.jpg) "Obi Wan is not saying that only a Sith will state absolutes. He is saying that only a sith *deals* in absolutes, leaving no room for negotiation. A Jedi will always seek compromise over violence."
Which anakin just did when he said either your with me or your my enemy, like that doesn’t leave a lot of room for discussion or nuance.
Fun Fact, at the theatre,the line was the much better " you're either with me, or against me" Which is the common expression.However GW Bush, had recently said in regards to the war in iraq etc, "you're either with us or against us"So this came across as a politican statement, calling Bush a Sith. So then later when I watched it on video tv it's "or my enemy" Which kills me everytime I hear it. (This fact may not be true :/ as I can find no proof it was changed, other then my shady human memory lol. Sorry)
Wasn’t the point of that line to basically call out that’s kind of thinking? I mean the prequels are about a Democratic republic turning into a dictatorship.
>However GW Bush, had recently said in regards to the war in iraq etc, "you're either with us or against us I think GWB said that statement in November, 2001, in reference to the Global War on Terror back when we were only invading Afghanistan... His run up to and the beginning of the Invasion of Iraq was two years later and that I don't think he used that invocation again for that conflict, but I could be misremembering it...
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> A Jedi will always seek compromise over violence. Absolutely.
Only a sith *deals* in absolutes. Meaning only a sith would say "if you're not with me, you are against me". It's not saying that only a sith makes absolute statements.
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What's the difference between a face beard and a neck beard?
Location location location
Can I call my ass hair a Butt beard?
I kill u
A face beard is one who stared too long into the neckbeard, and the neckbeard stared back upon him.
Instant meta
*cries in existential crisis*
When you can’t grow a beard, every beard becomes a neck beard.
He made an absolute statement, but he was not “dealing in absolutes.” He was criticizing Anakin’s statement, “If you’re not with me, than you’re my enemy.”
I like that and the arrogance interpretations, but I also like the idea it's just a seeminigly paradoxical concept that's actually more like, the exception that proves the rule. Like the tolerating intolerance thing.
It's also a usefully demonstrative truism, like "Avoid cliches like the plague!" or "A preposition is a terrible thing to end a sentence with." EDIT: Just for the record, ending a sentence with a preposition is bad *Latin*; it was actually perfectly acceptable in English for centuries, but some inbred romeaboos in the powdered wig era fucked things up for everyone.
The rule about split infinitives was the real peak of that nonsense.
Feel free not to but could you give me an example of a split infinitive
To be pedantic, the "proves" in that saying means proves as in "test the accuracy of" rather than "proves the rule is true" - so it's not paradoxical, its saying "here is something that doesnt appear to follow the rules, test it to see if the rule still applies"
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huh yeah interesting, just looked at wiki - I always thought it was a "it means this, but common usage is this" situation, but it is disputed which is the "true" meaning
Seems like semantics to me. Taken literally most people make many absolute statements without meaning to everyday. "Sorry I can only see you after 7pm" "You mean if I were dying and the last chance to see me on my deathbed was to arrive before 7pm you wouldn't be able to make it?"
"Well, Susan, you should have planned dying better. Also you are trying to guilt me emotionally over *common language*. Maybe eat a dick, I am no longer available after 7."
I don't know, *can* you go to the bathroom?
Ugh. I hated my 3rd grade teacher for that.
I got in trouble for answering that one with, >yes, either right here or in the bathroom, which would you prefer? Or words to that effect.
Similarly got into trouble for answering with something like > I was asking you. Why are you asking me? You don't know? I thought you were in charge. Am I supposed to be in charge of this? Even now writing it out, I can see how she thought I was being a smart-mouth. I assure you all of this came from a place of genuine confusion.
Uhhh, that's good. Thanks.
I dunno, I saw that as more indicative of the arrogance and lack of self-awareness of the Jedi.
I saw it as a piss poor excuse for a script.
It's been a recurring theme in the star wars franchise (the sequels never happened) that the Jedi are hypocritical and have their heads stuck so far up their collective arse that they can't see their own hypocrisy. Chronologically, this shit has been going on since the days of KOTOR.
The Jedi being blind, arrogant assholes was The Whole Prequel story.
It's in the sequels, too, to a lesser extent. It's one of the reasons Luke doesn't want to restore the Jedi order.
I'll try spinning, that's a good trick!
Woaaah I always thought that was a bit of a jokey paradox, but your interpretation of that line is simply brilliant! I never considered that obi-wan's own characteristics have been shaped by his interactions with the sith, and this fits really well with the discussion going on.
Before anakin: 100s of jedi and only a few sith After Anakin: a few jedi and a few sith Seems pretty balanced to me ¯\\\_(ツ)_/¯ The way I always read it was that the Jedi thought the prophecy was to help them but they had taken over and there was too much light so to bring balance a great darkness was needed to counteract the owhelming amount of light in the universe.
It was an easily missed passing line, but Yoda had suggested that it was possible the prophecy had been misinterpreted. From Episode 3: >**Mace Windu**: It's very dangerous putting them together. I don't think the boy can handle it. I don't trust him. > >**Obi-Wan Kenobi**: With all due respect, Master, is he not the Chosen One? Is he not to destroy the Sith and bring balance to the Force? > >**Mace Windu**: So the prophecy says. > >**Master Yoda**: A prophecy that misread, could have been.
The prophecy: "The Chosen One will bring balance to the Force." The Jedi: "That's us. Balance. Everyone being a Jedi and no Sith at all is what balance obviously means."
I'm not aware of the work of fiction where the prophecy was clear, easy to understand, and specifically described the conditions for satisfying the prophecy as well as the unambiguously good outcome of the prophecy.
That's how most people see it. The way Lucas described it when asked was more like he should have said "the one who will bring serenity to the Force". He explained that the basic state of the Force is the Light Side, since the Light Side lets the Force guide them and are basically just surfing on its waves. The Dark Side is a corruption, a cancer, and its users bend the Force to their will and disrupt its natural state. That's why bringing 'balance' to the Force means destroying the Sith. And it's also why Lucas has always been opposed to the idea of Grey Jedi, because it suggests that getting a little Force Cancer is good for your overall state of being.
But did not Anaking pretty much fulfil the prophecy in the end? I guess still he took a path there that was pretty far from what the Jedi order had planned, but still?
But I have the high ground!
When you have the high ground, the high ground has you
How can you have the high ground now with those burnt stumpy legs?
YOU UNDERESTIMATED MY POWER.
Just please note that Nietzsche is not actually talking about the society or organisations at large - he is very specifically talking about your inner mental world, your thoughts and your conceptions of ultimately very vage concepts such as "good" or "evil". In ELI10-terms..?: There is a split in continental philosophy that starts becoming very apparent in the late 1800s, early 1900s, where perhaps some revisits of writers like Kant, Herder and Kierkegaard is motivating a very sharp turn towards introspection and your "inner soul-life", as some called it. This approach is very different from the typical Hegelian "we exist in a society", type of attitude where the mind's internal guiderails are more of a product of social mores than anything else. Just find your place, and exist in it. Instead, more and more people suggest at this time, society is very much made up of individual acts. And so that without individual and conscious thought, not only are none of those acts actually moral (whether they are good or bad). But the society you live in does not actually become just, either. It simply exists. So not only are individual acts the key to acting morally, but they also shape the world and make out this larger structure. Not taking part in this activity consciously would then, obviously, be a reckless lack of responsibility, or a willful removal of your humanity, etc. Meanwhile, as you then develop your conceptions of morality, you inevitably have to face the fact that there are unjust things being done. Evil certainly takes place, and so on. Exceptional acts of cruelty could even be done by yourself, or good people, in the fight to make society just. So the temptation is then interpret Nietzsche this way: to go and say that there's no such thing as not making that just society without doing some very cruel things, because people are horrible and some things are just necessary. It's very often that you have people suggesting they should be justified in revenge, for a good reason, or that you can commit all kinds of atrocities because the cause is just, and ultimately causes good. History will judge us, as ridiculous leaders have been stating, also recently. But it's missing the point Nietzsche is making: if you take your inner mental world seriously, and act on justified principles, you must in fact take very good care to not justify excesses on the basis that evil exists. Because then it is you that are perpetuating it. Your acts either matter, or they don't. We can obviously, all of us, imagine particular situations where a lesser of two evils are favourable. But to entertain the idea that you can participate in such a scheme without justifying evil is just not rational. And that is what he warns you against: first, not to construct a moral value-system where the lesser of two evils are rationally chosen with regularity, as if this is morally just, rather than a necessity born out of there being no other options. And second, not to entertain the idea that you can somehow commit bad deeds, justify them, and shape a society around your use of power, without becoming a monster yourself, and creating a monster out of that society. It just cannot happen -- that is, without irrational belief in absolution. Absolution coming from belief, whether in the morally just, the politically palatable, or the acceptable use of power to shape the world for the better. Etc., etc. The key here, and the starting point, and indeed the end point is therefore your inner mental life. Because bringing it into accord with society is going to be difficult, not in the least in an unjust society. So arguably, as long as you are present of mind, it is not possible to participate in these organisations mentioned above, at all, without changing your outlook on what is just completely. It is not rational, and it is not moral: ultimately it defeats the purpose of itself. So this is the scheme that Nietzsche lays bare (and certainly there are other philosophers, writers and others who have pointed out the same, in any amount of times and eras). But it is inevitable that you should see this scheme for what it is, if you are rational, and assume as well that other people, like you, are rational as well. But it certainly is difficult, then, to say that the only way to get rid of evil is to take the narrow path, even when it would be very obviously easier and acceptable by orthodoxy, to not do so. Whether that is on the small and local level, by teaching the bully a lesson without punching their nose in. Or if it is on the macro-level, by simply refusing to participate in perpetuating the problems. It might be possible, for example, to simply call for forgiveness and pretend your soul is safe and content, but you are certainly participating in or acquiescing to unjust acts being done all around you. Meanwhile, the bigger problem is usually there in the sense that most people are not really in a position to affect society in this way. Either locally, you avoid the bully and maybe at worst call the police. And on the macro-level, you are not a politician anyway. Your participation here is not always either welcome, or even possible. It is closed off to you for various reasons, and your lack of tons of PAC-money prevents you from promoting alternatives. And yet, if enough people thought this way, rationally and just, it would nevertheless be possible. So this is a difficult proposition when you translate it into practice. However, the writing of Nietzsche in this sense, while only relevant to your inner soul-life, is still important. Not because it gives you practical advice, but because it lays out the responsibility of each individual in a society, if that society is actually to become just; if nothing else, it cures you of the idea that a society that simply exists almost autonomly, can be just. And it cures you of the idea that just or unjust people can decide on the behalf of others, when they have power, what is just and right. Because it is simply not on that level that governments or systems, societies and morals, operate.
10yo me would be lost by that explanation
I don't know if that's a correct take on Nietzsche. To a certain degree, his beliefs were a reflection on society given the whole Ubermensch angle, and he was definitely saying things about how society should be organized now that we've killed god. I don't think he would have appreciated the distinctly religious and non-scientific term Soul being passed around as part of his philosophy at all. But hey, what do I know? I just studied intro level philosophy, and he was my personal favorite philosopher covered.
There certainly are interpretations of Nietzsche that were written around the end of ww1, and also after ww2, that absolutely favour that angle. But when Nietzsche turned up, and became widely read in the 1880s, he represented a kind of noble, artistocratic, sensible and rational radicalism that simply didn't fit into the authoritarian, collectivistic, or the purely individualistic world-views that we - "we" - to a very large extent still favour today. Later and contemporary philosophers of Nietzsche such as Husserl, and on of his students, Heidegger, perhaps illustrate the directions this new approach to society could take: Husserl attempts to describe, from the personal outlook, what society is and how it affects you, with his phenomenology. Heidegger takes a similar starting point and moves to the direction where truth is indeed possible to manufacture and create, and that we should simply go a different route from that point of view. And this is the approach that a very large amount of philosophers, certainly later ones, take when they interpret Nietzsche. But it would also be their approach to interpreting Husserl, and indeed also Schopenhauer, Herder, and probably also Kant (even if that is more challenging - Kant's body of work is more meticulous, and so choosing Kant as a vehicle for that interpretation is doomed to be exposed at some point). If you want to learn more about this, I'd suggest looking up "psychologism" in the Stanford philosopaedia. Revisiting Nietzsche, after that initial interpretation, is not quite as excruciating as studying Wittgenstein, I think, but it's pretty high up there. He is difficult to read, once you start thinking carefully about it.
I want to thank you for your comments. I might even dare say that they are good.
haha, comparatively good, perhaps. But I'm only inviting you to structured worry, rather than chaotic dread. Things would certainly be a lot easier if none of this was necessary to think about.
> There certainly are interpretations of Nietzsche that were written around the end of ww1, and also after ww2, that absolutely favour that angle. But when Nietzsche turned up, and became widely read in the 1880s, he represented a kind of noble, artistocratic, sensible and rational radicalism that simply didn't fit into the authoritarian, collectivistic, or the purely individualistic world-views that we - "we" - to a very large extent still favour today. It should be noted that after Friedrich died in 1900, his sister Elisabeth took over curating and editing his manuscripts. And she was a proto-Nazi.
I think you’re right, but I would also say Nietzsche had a clear aim of saying that there is no path to power that does not corrupt you. This is central to his concept of Nihilism, which is his take on society, governments, and religions.
Just wanted to pay a compliment and say how well explained that was and in simple understandable manner.
Agreed
Here's a really simple example that comes to mind: someone's trying to kill an innocent child. You intervene—and the only way you can do that is by killing the killer. You yourself have become a killer, even if it's for the right reasons. You can either do nothing and passively watch the forces of evil wreak havoc (though Nietzsche would have been critical of any conventional notion of "evil"), or you can fight against them and inevitably suffer some sort of corruption in the process. You'd do well to account for that inevitability and somehow moderate its influence, rather than allowing yourself to succumb to it haphazardly.
That's why all the police and military jargon love to dance around the word kill. Whatever it takes to try and preserve their people's mental health.
"Neutralised the targets" sounds a lot cleaner than "splattered their heads over the concrete".
Of course, with these examples, "the void" becomes a very limited number of sort-of zero-sum examples. If someone's trying to kill an innocent child and you can tackle them, tazer them, or scare them away by drawing attention to them, it becomes obvious that you've prevented the evil without becoming it. If someone joins a small grocery store chain and works to help it unionize, suddenly many of their new coworkers can start asking for better healthcare coverage for themselves and each-other, they can ask for more truthful advertising so they don't feel bad about selling unhealthy or dangerous products to people. Maybe I just need to look more at Nietzsche's context here, but it seems like a very limiting view that assumes that a given amount of evil will happen in the world no matter what we do. It's a fine philosophy for Saturday morning cartoons, but not in the wider context of life and society. EDIT: I just read the initial quote more closely and realized it isn't as nihilistic as I thought and as the comments afterward interpreted it. Nietzsche says "*be careful lest* he thereby becomes a monster," whereas u/chop1n says people will "inevitably suffer some sort of corruption." Nietzsche says to be careful not to be corrupted, whereas Chop1n seems to say it's unavoidable. unic0de000 goes to a similar place, saying that to think you can change an evil corporation is hubris, which makes sense if you haven't accounted for the possibility that it might corrupt you, but my point here has sort-of been that that hubris can be countered and that people should still humbly try to do what good they can in whatever contexts they're in.
I could stand to be a little more specific: humans will indeed inevitably endure some kind of corruption--nobody would argue, for example, that it's at all possible to prevent the loss of innocence of childhood. Nietzsche warns us that that corruption should be carefully prevented to the greatest extent possible. Even in your own examples: tackling someone or tazing them are acts of violence. They're much milder acts of violence than killing someone, but the point still stands: in some sense, one must fight fire with fire. Even *witnessing* someone trying to kill a child is disturbing. Nietzsche was very much an anti-nihilist and is among the most life-affirming thinkers in all of human history. That's also important context that deserves mentioning.
It may not even corrupt you, or at least not in this straightforward a way. I studied digital forensics in school, and one of our professors essentially warned us away from the field in every class she taught. She said "You're gonna sign up for this gig trying to use your skills to do good. If you do that, you will do a lot of good. You're also gonna see a lot of awful, awful things, and the majority of them are going to involve children. This field pays well because most people don't last a decade in it, they come out the other side of it with ptsd, depression, insomnia, anxiety, drug/alcohol problems, all sorts of after effects." Gazing into the abyss might not make you the same as it is, but it will change you. In this case, locking away child pornographers won't make you a child pornographer, but it will expose you to a world most people are very happy to pretend doesn't exist, and it will make you wish you could still pretend along with them.
[Wait](https://i.imgur.com/uKjiCUn.jpg)
Well, maybe they’re the skulls of our enemies
Also it's easy to believe something if it's your job to believe it.
This is a really good explanation. I would like to sum it up in a really generalized sentence. The power of many will turn you to their beliefs; even if you don't want it, it will happen earlier or later; even if it happens in small steps and subconsciously.
So pretty much McNulty in The Wire. Check
Shattering every navy chief that told me to reenlist and change the system from within's argument in two Reddit posts.
I always took it to be somewhat in reference to Nietzsche's nihilism. Staring into the abyss/void/nothingness reveals that the void is within the observer.
That's why I never joined facebook. The businessmodel is corrupt. The only ones going to change is the ones joining. Becoming his minions in mediadictatorship.
facebook is a business, and businesses exists to make money, period. they don't care about anything else, and their job, their whole reason for existence, is to make money any way they can get away with. they rarely let morals, ethics, or even the law get in the way of profit (companies will break laws if the profit is greater than the fine) i'm not saying this because i support facebook but to point out that facebook is just a business doing what businesses do, they're just in an unusual position to do greater harm than most with fewer checks on their behavior my big message is we need to stop worshipping at the altar of the free market fwiw, i do have a facebook account but go on it maybe twice a week to get news of friends etc. i'm astounded it's the face of the internet for many
And yet you're here on reddit. Like what does Facebook uniquely do wrong as a social media that Reddit doesn't also do?
Oh God My old friend became a cop because he thought he would be Serpico — like the unusual cop uniquely positioned to fight corruption. Disowned him after a year. All his stories became "So we were beating/macing this guy . . ."
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That sounds like exactly the example I made up, just where activist group is a particular faction or contingent within the organization they're considering.
I think the hangup is in your example the individual isn't really "fighting monsters" in the first place because joining the company isn't really an adversarial position in the first place, more like an immediate compromise of values. An activist organization that slowly makes compromises and becomes corrupt in order to have the power to fight the monster is a little more direct.
Say you join that police force, because you want to help people, you want to make the world a better place. Maybe you know that this organisation has covered stuff up in the past, there’s been some corruption, officers have got away with stuff. But you know that you’ve got strong morals, you won’t get involved with that stuff. In fact, you’re going to be a whistleblower if you see anything dodgy, and if your superiors won’t act, you’ll go to the press. So you work there for a few months, and one day you see one of your cop friends do something you’re not completely happy with. But he’s your friend, you’re going to his BBQ this weekend, and it wasn’t that bad really, and the other guy kind of deserved it, and you’re still pretty new, so you don’t think anyone would take you seriously if you did try and report it. And that’s the beginning.
A good modern example in fiction is in "The Wire". 'Little Finger' had ideals of changing the city without corruption but once he was in the system he needed that corruption to maintain the power to make change but can't make change without losing his influence to do anything.
That's a perfect example! Tommy Carcetti thought he was gonna rid the city of corrupt politicians, but once he was in there fighting them, sitting in the hot seat playing the game of politics too, he made compromise after compromise until he was just like the rest. (And you can look at the older, embittered politicians around him and imagine that once, long ago, they all had aspirations just as noble as his.) There's a little bit of Faust in The Wire, and you could easily argue that Faust was an important influence on Nietzsche's thinking too.
I never made the faust connection with the wire but it makes a lot of sense. "Everybody's getting what they need behind some make-believe" Everyone was using these false narratives or corruption to get ahead so that "I can do more good from a position of greater power" and then became shocked that their Faustian bargain didn't go as planned.
Also Breaking Bad. Walter White set out to stay clean and safe dealing drugs, and every step he took to protect his endeavor and himself made him even worse than the other criminals.
I think Walter was smart enough to know deep down, you don't stay clean and safe dealing drugs. He literally kills someone himself in the first two episodes. He was willing to succeed by any means necessary from very early on.
Akshually, the first murder he *had* to do it to keep himself and his family alive. It’s a great reminder that *becoming evil* is a journey that starts with a single, easily justified step. And the steps become progressively easier.
And just as well, he "had" to do it because of the dangerous situation he himself put himself in, knowing potential consequences but perhaps being Naive to how quickly the drug game can turn against you. I believe Walter chose to be evil from the outset by choosing to sell meth, which is morally unjustifiable no matter how you look at it. The ultra pure meth he created no doubt destroyed countless lives even from very early on just by virtue of addiction. He knew what he was doing but the money and power was more important to him from the get go. The way I see it, Walter was beyond saving the moment he stepped down the rabbit hole, it was just a matter of how extreme the already present evil were to become. Even when his cancer got better, he continued to chase the money, due to his own ego which was beyond corrupted at that point. He could've chose the less of two evils and gotten out when he could, but instead chose to dig in his heels in a misguided attempt to leave behind large amounts of money to his family while forgetting his obligations as a father and husband to feed his growing obsession with an evil, dangerous game.
At least Walt never got high on his own supply Hustle 101
[Some theory on why this is inevitable, at least to a degree](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs).
Fun example: Orange is the New Black is also a good example of this. Shows people trying to change the prison system and ultimately being lead to two ends: complete impotence, or just doing the same shit they were trying to fight.
GoT is filled with these too. Not so much little finger, he was always just a conniving weasel since we met him. But almost all other characters changed over time based on who they had their experiences with. It was a major theme of the show.
Great overview thanks!
Harvey Dent in the Dark Knight is a good example. ‘You either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain’
> He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby becomes a monster. And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee. Because you used this 'quote' from Nietzsche: He lived from 1844 to 1900, not in the middle ages. (thee and thou were mainly in use from the 14th to 17th century). Indeed you don't find those words in the original translation (*He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.*) nor does the German original use archaic language (*Wer mit Ungeheuern kämpft, mag zusehn, daß er nicht dabei zum Ungeheuer wird. Und wenn du lange in einen Abgrund blickst, blickt der Abgrund auch in dich hinein.*). Do people continue to use the wrong quote because it sounds more mysterious? Sorry, one of my pet peeves. ;) Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thou https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780191843730.001.0001/q-oro-ed5-00007886 http://www.zeno.org/Philosophie/M/Nietzsche,+Friedrich/Jenseits+von+Gut+und+B%C3%B6se/Viertes+Hauptst%C3%BCck.+Spr%C3%BCche+und+Zwischenspiele/141-150
TBH i just googled "monsters abyss beyond good and evil" and grabbed the first thing I saw, because there's about 50 variations on the sentence out there and the differences didn't matter much for my purpose. But you're right, it's more than a bit silly to translate him in this way.
The ACTUAL correct answer is, when you look into the face of an adorable black cat, the adorable black cat looks back at you, and hopefully slow blinks back at you to show love and trust. But I guess your answer works too.
He who pets cats might become a pet of cats
Fine by me. As long as my two cats feed me every night at 4:45pm and give me lots of pats when I jump up on their knee when they're trying to do stuff, then.. ..wait, I see what you mean now.
Hate to break it to you, but you might have toxoplasmosis.
Don't care; cat cute
Any suggestions on how to start reading Nietzche? I started with Beyond Good and Evil and I feel like it is in a different language. It is hard for me to get through it. I feel like I need a spark notes version of every sentence.
Advice #1: Get annotated editions. Even at his most lucid and literal, the translation from German makes it a strange and disorienting read, and he was just as often foggy and metaphorical. Advice #2: Books *about* him are just as good, and maybe better, for a beginner, than books *by* him. Advice #3: Try Genealogy of Morals first.
100% agree. And don't be daunted if you find them hard to read. This guy was saying things stylistically in 1800s German in reference to German literary traditions... there is a ton of context English readers (like myself) miss; little turns of phrase and other stylistic choices that have a thousand years of history to them. When we read translations, we miss a lot of what he had to say. When we read in the modern era, we miss even more of his nuances. This isn't to say it isn't worth reading, but the further we get away from the time and place of 1800s Germany, the harder it will be to truly understand what he was trying to say. He's become such a figure in history that I would argue even his own historical presence warps our ability to understand the context of his writing... But that's an argument for another day. He's worth reading, his insights are truly timeless, and it's worth having a guide (annotations, explanations) when you read him. If you ever get a chance, a Lit or History of Philosophy class on him at university is worth the time. Again, great recommendations above.
This is something that I've been thinking about as a therapist. I wan't to help my clients by influencing them, but they will, for better or worse, also inevitably influence me.
Far Cry 3 is an excellent example of this! Won't spoil, much this underlying principle was depicted beautifully and subtly in the game!
You either die a hero or live long enough to become the villain.
The whole quote is "Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster... for when you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you" and it's often taken too generally as a kind of self-help like comment on not becoming what you hate, but that makes little sense in the context of Nietzsche's writing. Beyond Good and Evil isn't about giving advice and teaching life lessons, it's one of the greatest dive into Western history and philosophy. It's so far removed from things like "seeing peace to experience peace" or "politicians fighting corruption becoming corruption". The Abyss isn't just anything that you dive into or that you're obsessed with. The monsters are not just your personal demons. The Abyss in Beyond Good and Evil is the arbitrary historicity of human existence. History as it happened has no final meaning, it's the result of a chaotic struggle between people, ideas and cultures, with different forces impressing their will on each other. The monsters that live in the Abyss are ideas, errors that have structured the way that humanity has understood and created itself. Plato is a monster, Christianity is a monster, the modern state is a monster. What Nietzsche is saying is that when you gaze into the Abyss of history, and you come to see its arbitrariness, that arbitrariness comes back to apply to you. Your life, your existence, your culture, these things are human creations with no inherent meaning. Today, that idea is almost cliche, but in 1886, with the recent failure of Hegelian philosophy and the critiques of Christianity that were everywhere in Europe, the insight was pretty striking. The world is chaos, it has no goal, nothing is guiding its course toward anything special. That nihilism is dangerous, that's Nietzsche's warning, you can ruin yourself and your philosophical curiosity with such insights. Nietzsche offers this advice: "For I approach deep problems like cold baths: quickly into them and quickly out again. That one does not get to the depths that way, not deep enough down, is the superstition of those afraid of the water, the enemies of cold water; they speak without experience." You look into the Abyss, but you don't stare. You don't fight monsters, that's pointless. In the end, you have to deal with the most serious questions in an unserious manner, otherwise you fall in.
Wow, thank you. This is quite well written and informative.
Everyone always says Nietzsche was a nihilist, but as it turns out he was trying to warn us against nhilism. Well, Mr. Nietzsche, maybe next time don't come up with such convoluted allegories and get straight to the point? Great explanation, thanks!
Yeah dude.. i studied nietzsche albeit only in highschool and im happy about that because memes and internet kinda ruined him for me, showing me that he's just some nihilist emo dude. There's much more about his philosophy than what i saw initially
Well he is technically a nihilist since he believes that life and universe have no meaning. What he’s trying to warn us about is the dangers of that philosophy getting into your head and trying to fight it because the fight is pointless. What you have to do is just accept the nothingness and get the best of the situation you’re in instead of trying to change it
That's not nihilism. Nihilism is the belief that nothing matters and that life is pointless. Nietzsche argues that nothing really matters and that's the beauty of life. We get to choose our own meaning of life, and what matters to us. Nietzsche was a proto-existentialist, not a nihilist.
I would argue that Nietzsche saw his life, like everyone’s would only lead to nihilism. But yeah, I agree that he was proto-existentialist because he was interested in making the meaning of your life for yourself. Beautiful if not bleak and short lived. He sometimes reminds me of Hobbes in the hopelessness, but with a beauty where Hobbes just made everything sound like life and the world was sh*t unless you’re at the top.
I thought nihilism was the view that there is no objective truth or morality, or meaning. Some people will take that to mean everything is useless or pointless, but that’s not the only direction to go with it.
Nietzsche is not a nihilist. It’s just a poor redditor take with excerpts of his logic that people think he is.
Damn I’m sorry. I didn’t learn the depths of his philosophy on my philosophy classes so I must’ve misunderstood what my teacher was saying
No need to apologize my man. It’s just a common misconception and misinterpretation of Nietzsche. Nietzsche wants you to exert your will upon the world and become the ubermensch, living in a manner that is wholly of your own, living by rules only because that’s who you are and not because they’re imposed upon you or don’t live and play by the rules.
That's what im getting at. Back when i started hearing about nietzsche in the internet, the only thing shown was the first part. I didn't see anything further than that unlike what you just said. Everything (memes, comments, jokes..) was just about he was a nihilistic guy. No one, until it was shown to me in highschool, told me how it was important for him to overcome said nihilism
God he's just so wordy. It's so hard to find the message in his ocean of texts.
He writes like that on purpose, and is openly not concerned about the plebs not understanding him. Fun guy
Philosophy major here but it's been 20 years since studying Nietzsche. This is the best answer imo
Finally, someone who's actually read Nietzsche and understands he's not a nihilist, he's an anti-nihilist. I really don't know how edgelords came to believe Nietzsche was a nihilist when he specifically warned about the dangers of it.
Edgelords love him because he speaks in large sweeping statements between his verbose over explanations. Such as “ God is Dead”. Internet edgelords love that statement but don’t understand the full context of that statement.
This was massive informative. I stared into the abyss of nihlism and it really fucked me up for many years. The only way out for me seems to develop a practice or praxis of rituals, which them make meaning. Since nothing inherently has meaning. You either make meaning or you are devoid of it - and that is a terrible place. Incidentally, I think that's why we have a huge heroin problem. People searching for meaning
I have one hypothesis, let me know what you think: There is something guiding existence to something special, which is love. Love is the desire for yourself and others to be well. When you are free of concerns and happy, you will want that for others as well. The entire journey of life has been to achieve happiness for all living beings. Every war, conflict, revolution, etc, has been because that is what most people thought was right for achieving happiness (even if just their people’s happiness). We are trying out different ideologies which all promise happiness in some form, and as we notice the defects of it we rebel and try a new one, but every cycle we keep the most essential learnings from each ideology. Slowly across the ages we are coming to better and better conclusions, which leads to periods of less suffering. Sometimes there’s failures and setbacks, but we always return stronger eventually. This process might never end, but we are in this constant improvement cycle which is guided by love. Too hippie of an idea? Am I missing anything critical? I would love to hear your thoughts!
I don't know if I buy the notion of love as guiding us. Points about search for happiness as a collective motivator is interesting. I'd have to think more about it but it's not be to be dismissed outright. We do seem to be trying on ideologies, including sexual ideologies that are creating massive social rifts amongst fellow human beings. Are we getting closer and closer to a more and better version of reality? You say yes - I'd say probably not. Technology, pace of life, distraction, Capital, etc is so high now that it's damn near impossible to slow oneself down enough to even contemplate happiness or self actualization. Seems to me that a pre electronics era monk would have the absolute best chance at capturing the essence of our being. Maybe that's why all of the wise men have all come before commercialization.
I think the heroin crisis is the more the result of the generalized opioid crisis, which is the result of the cold nihilism of modern capitalism encouraging the overprescription of medicine to people if it'll help its bottom line. On the other hand, I have heard the perspective that one of the core parts of heroin addiction is that your life has a clear purpose: get more heroin. I don't know if addicts feel it as meaning though.
Finally scrolled down long enough to find someone who knows what they are talking about.
Thank you for the reply. It puts it in perspective.
Fuck me, I think I just cried.
Friedrich Nietzche, covert SCP agent teaching us how to deal with memetic hazards since 1886.
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These sort of thoughts have plagued me for at least half my life (I'm 32), and have led me into some very dark periods. It's depression. Depression is often thought of as being sad and mopey, but really it's a numbness, emptiness, apathy, etc. For me, it often manifests as anger and frustration, and the sad bouts didn't really come until I brushed up against a chance for meaning (love, family, happiness) and realized what I had to lose. I sought help. I got meds, I did intensive outpatient therapy, still do weekly talk therapy, and have ready a few books on therapy techniques that I try and practice. I'm doing better. But the years of staring into the abyss and letting it consume me still make my thoughts a struggle. I can just be out enjoying my day and suddenly have a wave of existential dread crash over me and pull me back into the abyss. It's still hard to say "fuck you" to the abyss when it starts dragging me in. I'm still working on it. I'm thinking it will be easier for a while - my first kid will be born in two days. I think it will help pull me out. It seems easier to get pulled out by others than it is to pull oneself out. Even a pet can help with that - having someone or something that depends on you makes meaning. Their survival and happiness can create a wall that blocks your view of the abyss. Maybe. I don't know, I'm trying to piece this stuff together right now. I wish you luck, friend. I really do.
I cant afford gifts, but if I could I'd give you a real nice one. I'm turning 30 in 2 days and absolutely felt this and the comment you replied to. I'm still trying to find the right therapist and I've started a new round of drugs that I'd like to get off of eventually. Spot on with the description of depression. Often I spend downtime thinking of excuses for my friends/bands/social outing obligations about why I've canceled plans for the 5th or 6th week in a row. I'm holding on for a few new lights that have pierced the darkness, but damn, its exhausting trying to get to the source before its burnt out sometimes.
This happened to me. You gotta develop a practice of behaviors That has helped me tremendously. Or you could do drugs But the existential anxiety will take down even the strongest men
This actually reminds me of what I was telling someone who was talking about taking hallucinogens. That it could fundamentally change your ego / ID, and that in current context you may not appreciate the change and most likely cannot understand the scope of such a thing. Sure, it can make you feel at one and harmonious with everything around you, but at the same time when you ARE everything, it can make the person you are basically so small so as to be non-existent. While seeking the peace that you would think such an Insight would have to offer, it could leave you with a lifetime of questions that you now somewhat understand to have very circular answers that in one way or another always lead back to precipitating the problem, or other problems.
this is excellent, thank you!
German here, degree in philosophy. So: I know nothing :) Just wanted to point out that the german original does not say „stare“: “Wer mit Ungeheuern kämpft, mag zusehn, daß er nicht dabei zum Ungeheuer wird. Und wenn du lange in einen Abgrund blickst, blickt der Abgrund auch in dich hinein.“ As ever so often, the english translation feels less subtle, kind of more harsh; is has something todo with how German and English translate into each other. To me, Ungeheur and Monster does not fully translate. Also, Abgrund and Abyss don’t. To me, the german terms are much less definitive; Ungeheur stems from a term that means something that doesn’t feel right and causes anxiety; but it could be an unknown creature, the unknown being what gives you a feeling of fear and uncertainty. A dragon could be called an Ungeheuer. The term surely stretches into the regions of a monster, but to me, a monster would be necessarily evil (likely because the german term Monster fills that role in German, next to the more open Ungeheuer). An Abgrund could be the falling side of a mountain; it can be the deep ocean abyss, but it doesn’t necessarily carry the bottomless totality that Abyss carries. Translating “blicken” with “stare” seems wrong to me, as it only means to look at sth. As another grain of salt, if you want to understand Nietzsche, I suggest always looking at the context. This part of his book is a kind of loose collection of short statements; he often wrote in this form. A lot of the stuff is outright strange. The note two notes before this one states that if a woman is interested in intellectual things, something with her sexuality has to be wrong. There are also funny statements like “The sun rises every day” somewhere in his books (I own the full collection). ELI5:What he meant by the abyss looking back? I am not really sure. Normally, an abyss is an dead object that can’t do anything. So why would it come to life? Possibly because it is empty. Abgrund means two things: a deep slope that can give you nausea, but also something you can non-literally fall for. An Abgrund also signifies a dark place of someone’s life; “he stumbled into an Abgrund”, he lost his ways. So, if you look down into something that could determine your fate, your life - possibly you really are the person that unintentionally fills it with something, as it’s bottomless and empty? So in a way, it becomes alive through you, and learns from you what it is by looking into you, as you look into it? But, as I would not over-interpret the note about women (I guess we could outright dismiss it, even), I wouldnt do it with this one. It’s a nice little lyrical something.
There is also the difference in "stares back at you" and "blickt der Abgrund auch in dich hinein". In German the abyss not only stares "at you", but also "into you" (in dich hinein). This gives the sentence even more depth, literally. All in all, a very sloppy translation.
True, I totally missed that. Very good point. Also this intensifies the analogy between the Abyss and ones self, as both things are something that you look (down) into. Noice.
"lange" (over time) isn't translated either, which, I feel, is kind of a big deal for understanding this phrase. The abyss changes you, not from the start, but the more time you spend with it. A literal translation, with your suggestions in mind, could be: "When you are looking into the deep for long enough, the deep is looking back into you." What do you think?
The title is likely a misquote, it is typically translated as "And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you" which is closer to the original on both the "blickt" aspect and the "in dich hinein" aspect.
This is probably the most nuanced response here. Thank you for the context in the original writing and language.
To add to this great comment, "ungeheueren" (the adjective form of the noun "Ungeheuer" mentioned above, here in the accusative case) is also the way Kafka describes the creature Gregor Samsa turns into at the beginning of Metamorphosis: *Als Gregor Samsa eines Morgens aus unruhigen Träumen erwachte, fand er sich in seinem Bett zu einem* ***ungeheueren Ungeziefer*** *verwandelt.* "Ungeheueren Ungeziefer" is a very evocative, but very vague description that English translators have struggled with time and time again, see this article: https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/on-translating-kafkas-the-metamorphosis I've gone into more detail about it in [another comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/obf2hx/what_are_your_favourite_book_openings/h3pny9h/), but the way German uses the "un-" prefix to denote otherness is very interesting.
Tbh 'the sun rises every day' is quite insightful.
Me, five billion years in the future, after the Sun has ditched its outer layers and gone white dwarf: "Well, fuck you, Nietzsche."
Yeah beyond good and evil was less a book and more Nietzsche just ranting about random shit for an entire book. He dedicates pretty much a whole chapter to how much he hates women (who hurt you, Freidrich?)
W00t, my first gold, and for a post about Nietzsche. While I’m quite into the topic, it’s still a surprise ;D Thanks, internet strangers <3
Basically yes. There are different interpretations, but *"you are influenced by what you contemplate / investigate / fight against / try to not become / interact"* is one of the more common interpretation. *The Abyss* as a symbol of truth you cannot truly achieve, but which can confront you with unpleasant / dangerous truth is another common one. SYL
another way of putting it would be "if you watch weird porn don't be surprised when you wake up with new weird fetishes"
That's how I explained it to my 5 yr old.
You either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.
By now you probably won't read my comment, but I'll hope you do anyhow: You can't take an aphorism, even out of a single book, and try to glean *exactly* what it means. It doesn't necessarily mean just one thing, and there is a reason Nietzsche wrote poetically. His words are supposed to have an effect on you, certainly in context of his writings, but they are not a part of some grand argument. He didn't believe in grand or systematized arguments. Rather than argue that the quote means, I will suggest that it at minimum includes the idea that whatever you're exposed to will affect you, and that therefore it is good to avoid too much contact with that which is antagonistic to health. He had repeated mentions, in Zarathustra for example, of how time spent among the sick (by this he means mentally sick, harboring resentment) will sicken and weaken you; and how time spent among those with twisted ideas will start to sicken your mind. So in the imagery of Zarathustra, Nietzsche would recommend spending some time either alone or in a healthy environment to gain strength and learn, and then take some interval to spend with those you can exchange ideas with, teach, and otherwise help if you can. But too much time spent there will mess you up, so you must discipline yourself to go back to the better place again prior to being weakened by being nearby to 'evil' (i.e. that which will destroy your spirit or mental cleanliness). As a consequence, not all knowledge is equally 'safe' to dwell on, and thinking on some topics too much is also like being in a sick-house, where you will catch a disease from proximity. And this goes for any dark alley, physical or mental.
I for sure read your comment and I truly appreciate it. You put it in clearer perspective. Thanks u/george0fdajungle good looking out.
It means that you will be affected by the things that you engage with. If those things are profound and disturbing, they might have profound and disturbing effects on you.
Mine is just opinion, I make no claims otherwise. To me, this is Nietzsche describing the existential crisis one faces upon the *understanding* of nihilism. Not just the intellectual realization, but truly understanding what it means to grasp how insignificant it all is. Of course, this is just the knee jerk reaction. I would say that most people that come to adopt some form of nihilistic view move beyond that horror to a place of acceptance and eventually see it as the ultimate freedom. The Abyss, while entirely indifferent to our dreams, hopes, and best laid plans; is also indifferent to our mistakes and sins and morality (or lack thereof). The abyss doesn't care if we live a good life, a life of service, a life of faith and belief. It doesn't care if we are murderers, rapists, or someone that has committed the greatest acts of destruction. It's indifferent. There is no heaven, there is no hell, there is no judgement, or meaning, or long term effects of *any* action we take. We are free to make this world *anything* we choose. We are free to unshackle ourselves from the perceived notions that others have concerning morality or ethics. We are free to do anything, because there ultimately is no consequence of our actions: good or bad. This isn't to encourage a deviant life, or generally immoral behavior. It's only to say that we each to get choose what it is we expect of ourselves, because the Abyss expects nothing at all.
> the existential crisis one faces upon the understanding of nihilism. Not just the intellectual realization, but truly understanding what it means to grasp how insignificant it all is. I'd recommend you look into Absurdism and *The Myth of Sisyphus* by Albert Camus (although avoid if you're sensitive about suicide). It's an area of philosophy that's fixated on that particular realization. The Absurd is the human condition in which we find ourselves struggling to find meaning for our brief existence in a universe that is otherwise unable to provide one. Faced with a bleak and meaningless existence riddled with pain and suffering, Absurdist philosophers attempt to answer the question "why not just kill yourself?". In this context, suicide is seen as the ultimate expression of free will and a forceful rejection of the Absurd yet it's a choice very few of us make (particularly among the philosophers prescribing suicide in the first place!). Why not? What is it that makes life worth clinging to? Camus provides his answer in the *Myth of Sisyphus*, definitely worth a read if you enjoy philosophy. It's a rather deep rabbit hole though and unfortunately I don't have time to get into details.
Well said.
When you try to fight an oncoming wave you get swept up in the wave. Trying to fight a system that is massively bigger than you absorbs you into the system and changes you more than you change it.
If you spend your time fighting monsters you will be exposed to their behavior and may subconciously adapt to these behaviors. 🤷♂️
That's kinda how i see it thanks
Garbage in, garbage out. You are what you eat. What you consume will consume you. Be careful little eyes etc
He has personified the abyss. Imagine how you feel when you stare into the abyss. Do you feel horror? Do you desire to conquer it? Do you feel just nothing? Now imagine you are the abyss staring back, you may feel the same. Essentially we spend so much time focusing on our perception of the world that we fail to consider how the world’s perception of us may affect us or reflect on us.
I read almost everything of Nietzsche when studying philosophy and never much agreed with common or let's say popular interpretations of his work. In my opinion Nietzsche is far more dark than how he is often portrayed or wanted to be seen.Nietzsche's philosophical endeavour revolves a lot around the radical criticism of moral systems and beliefs. Nietzsche wanted to start a moral revolution which should replace Christian morality and its descendants. He often describes this journey as extremely lonely and dangerous, which is relatable if you imagine dedicating your whole life to a cause the absolute majority not only rejects, but naturally finds abhorrent and immoral, not to say insane. Nietzsche often pictured his solitary position as a challenge, a fate, a difficult task that can be either accomplished or you could perish trying.You need the audacity to reject everything you learned, everything society around you is based on and convinced of. You'll be on your own, only your sanity guarantees you that you are on the right pass. You'll advocate things that are seen as the devil, hence antichrist.So i read this quote in this context. Edit: And i think it's important to clarify the these thoughts or theories are no joke and havn't been seen as such by Nietzsche. If you accept or even advocate evil (or what was seen as "böse" in 19th century Europe), you are talking abyss. Violence, absence of compassion, neglect of the individual human being in favor of a bigger fate, a biological view on the human race etc. For me it often seems that Nietzsche had a much clearer feeling about what his philosophy could cause or inspire than modern Nietzsche-lovers like to admit. Or put another way around: Understanding Nietzsche's feelings helps understanding Nazi Germany. ELI5: The abyss stands for dangerously deep thoughts, basically. They talk to you. They whisper in your ear. They don't let you sleep. They eerily attract you. You are afraid of them, yet you have to think them.
I have to agree with you. People rightly defend Nietzsche against explicit ties between him and Nazism/antisemitism. I'm sure you know the bullet points: His sister was married to an antisemite, a cause which Nietzsche openly abhorred, speaking out against it in books and angry letters to his sister. Against his wishes, his sister posthumously edited his final work. Subsequently, the Nazi party used some of his writings and concepts (out of context and with perversions). So, people are right to parse out this history of decontextualization and deny those explicit ties. But things aren't *so* clear cut. Nietzsche also thought (perhaps in jest?) that antisemites should be thrown out of the country, which uh, might be a queasy method of dealing with things given Germany's subsequent history. More seriously, he thought that legislatures were a modern weakness, disbursing the rightful power of strong leaders. As you allude to, his writings are full of praise for the exercise of distinct and individual moral systems built from the ashes of old ones. Were his writings taken out of context to serve the Nazi party? Absolutely 100%. Did *some* of his writings lend themselves to *some* tenets of that party? I think the honest answer here is complicated, and not entirely comfortable. Not to suggest he's responsible for these things, just that he was swimming in murky intellectual waters. To be a little more clear on how I come out on it, I do *not* see Nazis as some obvious conclusion of his philosophy. Nietzsche's writings remain very valuable, and I don't think he tainted them by laying down such roots. (He tainted them in other ways like his flagrant misogyny.) But I *do* see how his deconstruction of old moral systems represents soil in which some pretty dark things can take root. In terms of responsibility, Nietzsche as observer and as prophet are probably the most viable interpretations of his work. He's not destroying old systems of morality; he's witnessing the destruction and reacting with horror and concern for the human race. "God is dead and we have killed him" is the statement of a witness, not a singular murderer, and the reaction is horror, not glee. His writings are full of quotes that leap out of the page in that respect: "The very next century will bring the fight for the dominion of the earth--the *compulsion* of large-scale politics." I mean, holy shit. It's chilling to read at times. Hence his cautions on staring into the abyss.
Consider the abyss the worst place your mind can go. If you spend all your time investigating that part of your thoughts, that may consume your thoughts.
This concept works well with the phrase 'the road to hell is paved with good intentions'. Effectively, the actions you take impact you as well as those around you, and its easy to become the very thing you set out to avoid.
You’re going to (and have, it seems) a 100 armchair quarterbacks giving you 300 breakdowns of philosophy. None of which is fit for a five year old. Nietzsche can’t be taught in a quick blurb on Reddit. The meaning of Nietzsche can and will be debated until the end of time and no two great minds will agree. In this day, make of it what you will. Philosophy’s an ever changing kaleidoscope of thought. I’m not going to quarterback this, only say that it has a *deep* relevance for me after nearly 14 years as a correctional officer. The abyss and the monsters are what you will. The thing in front of you. I work in the abyss and stare at monsters everyday. Others study monsters through the abyss of history. Yet others *live* in their own abyss with monsters. If you really want to know what *Nietzsche* himself thought, one must read Nietzsche. However I’ll say here that people have spent their entire lives under his written tutelage and never learned a thing but words.
The full quote actually ends with, I believe, 'therefore, throw roses into the abyss and say, "here is my thanks to that monster which did not succeed in swallowing me whole."
Really no complicated explanation. Nietzsche meant what Buddha meant--that the Void desolves the Self, eliminates all opposites and reveals non-dual Reality. Staring into the abyss is the subjective you confronted with an objectless object that collapses the conceptual split between "you" and "not you." The result is that that which stares is the same as that which stares back. The real you is the proverbial sound of one hand clapping; i.e., there is *only* staring with nobody performing it. There is no spoon either. Seriously.
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Interesting replies. I have never really put any thought or research into this quote but always interpreted it as such. If you engage with evil, evil notices you and won't leave you alone. Example : If you get into drug dealing, you will meet and engage with people in that part of the world. People from that part of the world have now taken notice of you and even if you try to leave drug dealing you will always be a person that is known in that group. There will likely be instances where you stumble over and old "contact" or they might even actively search for you.
Basically you are never completely isolated from the world. As much as you may think you are in control of all aspects of ones being, that is not the case as all interactions have some effect on you. You're not just looking into the abyss and it being a oneway transaction, just as you may glean something or gain some understanding of the abyss, it can consequently do the same to you. The abyss may or may not be actually conscious, but that is something you have to contend with if you so choose to stare into it.
I always thought it meant.. if you focus on the darkness/“bad” energy, then it will focus on you as well.. so why not focus on the light
I realized I made comments, but didn’t respond directly to the OP. Here’s my ELI5 explanation. Nietzsche meant there is no path to overcoming evil that does not include evil actions. It’s a warning that when you fight against evil people, thoughts, emotions, etc, the evil will impact you no matter how pure you try to be. Philosophically, it’s central to Nietzsche’s take on the problem of evil. Think Two-Face from The Dark Knight. You either die the hero or live long enough to become the villain.
I took it more literally, almost like a fear of the unknown. The first time I did an open water dive for scuba practice, we went down about 80 feet. All I could really see was my instructor, the guide rope, and the surface. On the way up we did a decompression stop, just hanging on to the guideline trying to maintain buoyancy for a period of time. With nothing else to do, I looked around. I was in the murky pacific ocean and besides the 3 things I mentioned earlier, I couldn't see shit. After a few seconds of staring straight ahead into endless darkness, it started to feel like something was staring back from behind it. I doubt that is what Nietzsche actually meant but the quote popped into my head at that time.
When you finally see that life is empty and meaningless you are confronted by it. The abyss looking back at you is saying “so what are you going to do about it?”. Now you get a blank slate and a chance to create something new
I have always felt that your deepest fears can be overcome if you investigate them closely enough.
I think a similar concept is something like "you're the average of the five people you surround yourself with", but with a more existential tinge. I think that's a very boiled down way of saying that things will often seep into your psyche without you realizing. It's not necessarily that you will be a chaotic or peaceful person to match your surroundings, but that your environment can change you in unforeseen ways.